Buyers and sellers use a variety of techniques to ensure goods and services meet their mutual expectations. However, traditional procurement systems have been proven to be error prone, labor intensive, and costly operations. For example, often times, when a buyer is looking to purchase a batch of articles, a buyer might negotiate terms for the purchase prior to making the purchasing decision. The negotiation allows the buyer and seller to ensure the articles and terms (e.g., price, quantity, delivery conditions, etc.) will meet any specific requirements. Traditional buying and selling mediums, such as auctions, catalog based purchasing, and selling, and the like, do not always facilitate the most efficient matching of requirements. The recent ascendancy of electronic commerce provides a means of avoiding, or at least reducing, the problems presented by the use of traditional buying and selling mediums.
In many respects, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies have largely eliminated the most labor intensive and costly portions of the buying and selling type commerce operations (e.g., the use of mass mailings, printed specifications, catalogs, updating preprinted product information, etc.). To take advantage of advances in network technology, a variety of electronic commerce facilitating schemes have been developed. One such scheme involved the use of business-to-business buying and selling exchanges implemented on the Internet. The term “electronic commerce” or “e-commerce” originally evolved from remote forms of electronic shopping to mean all aspects of business and market processes enabled by wide area communications networks, namely, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies. E-commerce is a rapidly growing field, and is generally understood to mean doing business on-line or selling and buying products and services through Web (e.g., Internet based) storefronts or through other similar distributed computer networks. In general, electronic commerce is substantially similar to the more traditional catalog based commerce schemes. The business-to-business e-commerce exchanges, or simply “B2B exchanges” have evolved to focus on the specific needs and requirements of buying and selling between businesses.
As the use of B2B exchanges has proliferated, the implementation of electronic commerce auctions has become increasingly common. Auctions are different from traditional catalog based commerce schemes. Auctions generally aggregate buyers or sellers to purchase or sell items/services through the respective submission of competitive bids. Generally, the most competitive bid is designated the winner of the auction. For example, in an auction amongst multiple competing buyers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the most money for the specified item or service. In an auction amongst multiple competing sellers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the specified item or service for the lowest price.
Thus, buyers and sellers participating in an auction compete with one another on the basis of the terms of their bids. Auctioneers have an interest in making the bidding process as competitive as possible to effect the most efficient matching of requirements between sellers and buyers (e.g., getting the best deal). Large numbers of buyers or sellers competitively trying to outbid one another usually leads to the most favorable terms.
However, auctions are usually rigid with respect to certain terms. For example, in a procurement auction with multiple sellers, a buyer will establish certain terms such as a required delivery date, a required quantity, or other terms describing the item (e.g., color, size or condition). If a seller can meet the terms, they may bid on the item. However, if the seller cannot meet all of the required terms, they cannot bid on the item. Because auctions are rigid, it is not possible for a potential bidder to deviate from the structure of the auction, often to the detriment of the organizer of the auction as well as the bidder.
Consider the following example. In an auction amongst multiple competing suppliers (e.g., sellers), the buyer establishes a required delivery date. If a potential supplier cannot meet that delivery date, they can not enter the auction. However, it is possible that the potential seller would make the lowest bid in price, but would miss the delivery date by a short time period. Furthermore, it is possible that the buyer would want to accept the bid of the potential supplier because it is so low and because the delivery date is only missed by a few days. It is possible that it is of more value to the buyer to get the lower priced item at a later date.
Unfortunately, current auction formats do not permit deviation from the required criterion as detailed by the auction organizer. As such, current auction formats are not flexible enough to account for the true value of the item to the auction organizer, but rather only account for rigid predefined terms.